Situation Room
NHS
Parents Council 2006-2007 Project
Background
This year the NHS Parents Council will fundraise for a
Situation Room for health operations and outcomes. This project
is necessary, as it will give NHS students a learning experience
that requires them to make decisions with real world complexities
and pressures. We believe it fits squarely in the experiential
learning model that NHS is known for and will offer our children
an unparalleled educational experience.
Three of the best-known situation rooms are the ones in
the White House, the World Health Organization, and at the
Health and Human Services (HHS), the largest federal department
in the government, which includes the FDA, FEMA, and the
CDC, headquarters. All serve as the information and
communication hub where information is monitored, digested,
and sent to the appropriate people and institutions. These
are also places where decision makers come together to strategically
work through challenges.
By creating a NHS Situation Room, our students will learn
critical thinking, strategic planning, and leadership skills
that will be applicable for their careers in the health care
arena.
Essential Teaching Tool
Situation Rooms are used within different sectors, from
defense to health care, but with the same overall goal: to
improve conditions through information sharing. Although
the term "situation room" is typically used in
the emergency response context, it also is used for longer
term decision making, such as providing services for the
elderly or disadvantaged, resource allocation, and so on. Therefore,
all four major at NHS will benefit from building the NHS
Situation Room.
In the NHS Situation Room, students will use the latest
technology in a real world setting to enhance the "tabletop
exercise." This teaching tool will allow NHS
students to respond to public health crisis's, such
as a pandemic flu outbreak, as if they were in a health department
or related agency. With the use of publicly available
maps, charts, GIS (geographical information systems), and
other health information, coupled with the ability to alter
the teaching scenario based on the decisions students make,
faculty can show how early intervention and strategic planning
can reduce/limit the number of cases in the outbreak. One
can imagine doing this type of exercise from the health care
management and other perspectives too.
Beyond the Hilltop—Building Strategic Partners
The data infrastructure on health, health care, health care
institutions, and related matters that is needed to support
the NHS Situation Room can be useful beyond the Healy Gates.
We foresee this ability benefiting not only faculty research,
but offering a valuable service to the community as well.
Having a Situation Room will provide the School with an opportunity
to retain stellar faculty, as well as a way to reach out
to health care and public health leaders to become adjunct
professors in the School. By adding the community link,
the overall profile of the School will be raised.
 Summary
The Situation Room, will be a shared information and communications
center that will be designed to facilitate collaboration
and problem solving amongst NHS students. The most
important reason to build a Situation Room is that it will
give our students a chance to operate in an interactive environment
where information is assembled and evaluated, so that they
can explore the implications of alternative decisions. Knowing
how to produce, evaluate, and interpret information in a
Situation Room setting will prepare our students with life-long
decision-making and leadership skills
The Look
The NHS Situation Room will include 10 flat screen monitors
with map and illustration capabilities at the front of the
room, rows of desks for approximately 30 students each equipped
with computers and phones, five television news monitors,
and video teleconferencing capabilities.
See previous NHS Parents
Council Project
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